


An Immortal's Guide to Being a Foodie

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Methuselah's Children [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy and Nicky's Gratuitous Food Adventures, Comfort Food, F/F, Found Families, M/M, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25411129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: Andy and Nicky love food. They have for hundreds of years. So they start a game, or a tradition rather, every year they make a list of foods they want to eat, or a specific type of food they want to try.Sometimes the rules change, but it's their ritual. All the way to the end.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Methuselah's Children [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811
Comments: 99
Kudos: 896





	An Immortal's Guide to Being a Foodie

Food, by its very nature, is meant to sustain the body. Taste, by its very nature, is meant to entice or repel those who would eat. Food is anywhere one dares to look for it. Whether it  _ tastes  _ good, is an entirely different matter. 

There are things that Nicolo learns early in his first steps through eternity. Namely: Andromache the Scythian loves food. She tries everything there is to try. She dies eating poisonous berries and choking on rancid meat, but she tries it nonetheless. She wakes and she seems to make a mental tally of precisely what she likes and what she doesn’t like. What the effects of the food are, and what her personal preference is. 

She even dabbles at cooking food, though her skills in that realm are best left forgotten about. Nicolo finds himself cooking for her, enjoying her moans of approval as she smells his work and savors the results. 

Nicolo  _ likes  _ food. He finds it entirely pleasing. But he doesn’t worship it the way Andromache does. He doesn’t hold it on his tongue as if it is a blessing, licking juice as it sluices down his chin or smacking his lips to ensure every last morsel makes it to his gullet. Even so, he delights in how Andromache responds to his culinary attempts. 

He collects spices when they are in the east. He keeps them preserved in pouches at his side, and he smells them for freshness before adding them to his meals. He hunts for mushrooms as they travel from one land to the next. He learns early on which are bad and which are good. He compares notes with Andromache to ensure he does not forget. Some are quite similar in appearance, though. He kills them all one evening and they wake up stunned at the result. He accepts their endless teasing for three decades afterwards. It is entirely justified. 

The game, if it can be called a game, starts in the fifteenth century. Spices are just starting to travel about the continents. Flavors are being mixed and cultures are starting to define themselves by the dishes they create and the pomp that went with them. Farmers start trying new crop growths and  _ heat  _ joins the milieu of tastes in Europe. Peppers tinge meals with a vibrant kick and even Nicolo cannot ignore the sheer pleasure that comes from trying food from one place and another. 

They sit with their heads bent together, comparing menus and possibilities. “Do you know what would be nice?” Nicolo asks. “A duck with a honey glaze and sichuan peppers with carrots too.” 

_ “Yes!”  _ Andromache moans, imagining the flavors already. They conspire to gather the ingredients the next time they go east. 

It becomes tradition after that. They dream up meals and recipes, and at least once a year travel to a specific country to taste their delicacies. They leave Yusuf and Quynh to amuse themselves together, and they travel on their own. Arm in arm they spend the whole while discussing food and food alone. They stop at every inn they can. They compare tastes and flavors and they keep track of their opinions on rolls of parchment filled by Nicolo’s steady monastery-trained-hand.

After they lose Quynh, their routine shifts only in the form of Nicolo collecting materials for a meal and once a year designing something just for her. Sometimes it takes him months to get the right spice or the right grain he’s looking for. Sometimes, the result is rushed or not nearly as lovely as he’d intended. But for decades it is the only thing he can do to keep Andromache from diving into the sea.

He draws her from the ocean with small little remembrances. Here, this is Quynh’s favorite fruit. Here, do you remember how she liked this kind of meat? Here, try these vegetables. Here, something new. 

Nicolo arranges platters of foods. He cooks in every way he knows how. Yusuf forges him pots and utensils that he otherwise would have had no access to. Nicolo carves his meats as one from Africa, and Europe, and the Orient. He arranges his peppers and his spices from the heat of India to the cold of Scandinavia. He cooks with wines, and eventually with brandies. He adds berries and mustard seeds. He collects fresh butter from the local farms and he glazes his breads with it. He spends hours in contemplation on how to produce the best cheeses, then experiments in order to make it right. 

“Andromache…” he whispers to her. “You must remember to live.” He hands her his creations, and she tastes them one by one. She rests with her head on his shoulder and she tells him what she likes. Which nuts she prefers. What she’d change. What she would keep the same. He listens and makes notes, and they grieve Quynh by honoring her memory. 

* * *

“We should go to India this fall,” Andromache says, forty years after they lost Quynh to the sea. Nicolo and Yusuf are cleaning up the remains of dinner and her voice had broken through the quiet peace that had settled about their home. She is looking out the window, toward the ocean as she always does. As if she would see Quynh climbing from the beach at any moment. India would be the farthest away they’d been since they lost their beloved sister. 

Yusuf is careful as he asks, “Are you sure?” for it is not just the location he’s asking about. It’s the decision to leave. It’s the end of the fight that Andromache has finally signaled. They had known it was coming. The last man who had sailed on Quynh’s ship was dead. There are no more records. There is nowhere left to look. 

For a long while, Andromache says nothing. She keeps looking at the sea. Her fingers clench painfully tight against her arms where she’s crossed them. Then, with great resolution, she releases a long breath of air. She nods sharply. “Yes. India. The start of the cardamom harvest is in October. We should go.” 

“Then we’ll go,” Nicolo confirms. “We’ll go and we’ll make a lamb, yes? And we’ll have it in our tea too.” 

That fall, they travel to India. They help harvest the cardamom. They feast on lamb. They drink tea rich with spice. And each of them savors their food and gives a final thought to Quynh. They hope, in their own grief, that Quynh has been released like Lykon has. That she has died for good and that she has been set free from eternal torment. 

It is a fool’s hope, but they hope for it nonetheless. How else could they rectify the luxury of living, while she lay in torment at the bottom of the sea? 

* * *

In 1812 they dream of a Frenchman shivering in the cold. They are in the Americas then, fighting the British on Canadian soil. They eat grouse and pigeon, pears and apples, bread only when they had access to a home where they could stay long enough to let the yeast rise, and biscuits when they could only make something quick. The spice trades to America have not yet been as successful as elsewhere, though there are some that are being freshly grown and planted. It’s a start, but the progress is slow. 

When the Frenchman dies, they wake tasting his blood on their tongues. Nicolo and Yusuf gag and cough. They curl on their sides and spit uselessly, trying to shake away the iron and copper that staines their mouths. Andromache wakes silently. Her eyes wide and one hand pressed to her lips, as if trying to keep the taste in. As if it reminded her of something else. 

“What was that?” Nicolo asks. 

“There’s another,” Andromache says. 

“Another  _ what?”  _

“Another of us.” It takes him a long while to understand what she means. It’s been hundreds of years since he thought about the dreams he had. Where he imagined an angel and her consorts dancing around a fire, laughing in sublime divinity. 

He turns to meet Yusuf’s brown eyes. His lips open and close uselessly, but Yusuf’s mind is elsewhere. His nose is scrunched, as if trying to recall the scene that had flitted before his mind. “It is a man,” he says at last. “White. French, I think. He did not seem a Quebecer. The others there...they spoke and...their French was not Quebecois nor Acadian either.” 

Andromache growls, “That’s inconvenient.” 

“Why?” Nicolo asks. 

“It will be months before we can sail to France.” 

“At least the Terror is over.” It’s only a small blessing. Neither Yusuf nor Andromache seem pleased by the observation. “Think of the wine,” he said instead. This time, they laugh. Their good mood lets them fall asleep. They do not dream of their new brother for the rest of the night. 

They do dream of him at least once a night every night moving forward. 

It isn’t hard to dispatch themselves from their military obligations in the war. One battle gone ‘awry’ finds them all ‘dead’ at the enemy’s hands. They get up after they have been tagged as deceased, and they quietly slip away from the battlefield before they can be buried. They strip their uniforms and begin the long walk to the ocean where they can fetch a boat that ferries them to France. 

Andromache is right. It takes months to travel. The ocean is the worst part. They dine on salted meats and squishing vegetables. They eat freshly caught fish and drink watered down wine. The taste is pungent and the company is terrible. Andromache’s hair has been cut short since Quynh’s death. Her clothes veering toward the masculine. With dirt on her cheek she could be confused with a young clean shaven man, but only if one were inclined to ignore her intrinsic beauty. The sailors leer and make comments. Nicolo stands at her side. Their passenger list declares them siblings. Yusuf is their porter. The denomination grits at Nicolo’s soul and he glowers at everyone who issues Yusuf with a command. 

“He is not your slave,” Nicolo hisses when the chef barks for Yusuf to make himself useful and fetch something from the hold. “You are not  _ worthy  _ of speaking to him, thus.” 

“He will spit in your food for that,” Yusuf warns, after. 

“It could hardly make it taste any  _ worse, _ ” Nicolo snarks in turn. 

The chef does spit in their food, but Nicolo is right: the taste is so pitiful that if anything, it may have even been an improvement. They each long to be back on dry land. They each pretend that their bad mood stems from their meals and not from the memory of Quynh, and the thought of her screaming beneath their feet as they did nothing at all to save her from her watery grave. 

* * *

Sebastien le Livre takes to his immortality poorly. They find him at home, with his wife and children. Having them appear at his house sets his teeth on edge and he orders them all to leave. It takes days before they manage to meet with him properly, and even then he is hostile and uninterested in their advice. 

He yells at Andromache. He punches Nicolo in the nose. He is killed by Yusuf, and then he kills Yusuf upon his awakening and is killed by Nicolo in turn. Andromache pins him to the ground and tells him to knock it off. He is not in any mood to listen. 

He thrashes and flails against her. He snaps at them. He doesn’t want what they’re telling him. He wants to return to his wife and children. He wants to live with them, and he has no intentions of leaving or fighting any other wars. 

“You’re not listening,” Nicolo says. “You will grow old, and they will not.”

“Then I will. But I’m going to eat my wife’s cooking and spend every moment of their lives with them until that happens. Find me again in fifty years.”

* * *

In fifty years, le Livre’s wife is dead. His children are dead. He’s become a connoisseur of every liquor known to man, and he weeps when he sees them approach. “You were right,” he says. “You were right, you were right, you were right.” He clings to Andromache, he apologizes to Nicolo and Yusuf. 

Nicolo makes a paella as le Livre tells them a story of resignation and hatred and the faces of his children twisted in fury. They eat spanish rice and drink a bottle of wine. They say prayers for le Livre’s family, and they are quiet in their grief. 

“The worst is the dreams,” le Livre tells them when he uncorks a second bottle and starts filling their glasses. 

“Dreams?” Yusuf asks. 

“I’ve had nightmares almost every day...a woman in an iron coffin deep under water.” Andromache’s glass shatters when she drops it. She stares at le Livre. Her blood has rushed from her face. The tension grows as no one speaks. Le Livre doesn’t seem to know what he’s supposed to say or do. He looks between Nicolo and Yusuf for answers, but they have none. They too have frozen into stillness. 

Until finally, like a spice gone wrong, Quynh’s name is breathed into the room. She burns them. She drags bile up from their stomachs. She clutches at their lungs and brings tears to their eyes. She is a feeling that cannot be quenched and she rests there between them all, vicious and unloving. 

They are far from the sea, but that night, everything smelled of salt water. And when they slept, they all dreamed the same dream. Screams in the water. Hands beating against an iron cage. And the crushing weight of the ocean, almost as powerful as the weight of the abandonment after three hundred years. 

* * *

20th century preservatives are equal parts blessing and curse. As they travel, they are able to indulge in delicacies that would have gone bad otherwise. However, the flavors start shifting to something chemical in nature. Andromache picks it up immediately. She bites into a sandwich and spits it out, complaining that the meat is fouled and wrong. 

Le Livre, now going by Booker (an attempt to distance himself from a family that rejected him in the end), finds it adorable. He joins in on the game she and Nicolo play. He throws an arm around Nicolo’s shoulders and says “Nicky, Nicky, how much would you give me if I found something she couldn’t identify?” and Nicolo grins and nods his head. They buy food for Andromache and bet amongst themselves. 

They grow outlandish with their attempts. They travel the world and they rush back to Andromache’s side. “Andy, try this,” they say, and she indulges them because she loves food and she loves them, and indulging is all she has left after all this time on Earth. 

Yusuf never engages, though he is fully on Nicolo’s side. He helps him scour the earth for new foods. He helps him navigate travel plans in order to indulge the endless game he plays with Booker, and always he laughs in delight when one of them loses - regardless which one - because it’s astonishing how precise Andromache’s pallet has become after all these years. 

It’s only later, after Merrick and after Booker is put into exile, after they discover their Andromache, their Andy, has lost her immortality, after they’ve acquired a new immortal to raise as their own, that Yusuf really puts much thought into just what the game meant for Nicolo and Andromache across the centuries they’d been playing it. 

It had been an excuse to enjoy life and to be better for it. An excuse to indulge in their humanity and to remind themselves that they were allowed to be happy, just for a little while, in the midst of all the chaos of the world. 

Yusuf finds Nicolo sitting in the kitchen six months after Booker has left them. He’s sitting at the counter, facing the stove and the fridge, and the cutting board where he makes all of his best meals. “Nicolo?” Yusuf asks quietly, announcing his presence and stepping into the solemn space that his love had made for himself in the cool dark of the night. 

“She’ll be gone soon,” Nicolo says. One day, one week, one month, ten years, twenty, thirty — it didn’t matter. For them, it would all be too soon. He has a cookbook in front of him. Yusuf hadn’t seen it when he’d first entered, but he sees it now. He remembers, vaguely, that Nicolo had been reading one the night they’d been attacked by Copely and Merrick’s thugs. He’d been trying to come up with something that Andromache wouldn’t recognize, but would love regardless. The perfect dish. 

The book Nicolo has now is written in Vietnamese. There are pictures showing the methods required. The one on the page he’s set at is an overview of the ingredients needed. Yusuf wraps his arms around Nicolo’s waist. He rests his chin on Nicolo’s shoulder. “She will.” There is no use trying to deny it. Nicolo needs to grieve. Needs to process this death. Pretending it won’t happen will do neither of them any good. Still, it hurts to hurt him. To feel how Nicolo shudders at the admittance. How he sags bonelessly in Yusuf’s arms. His head lolls back to rest on Yusuf’s shoulder, baring his throat. It should be enticing, but it isn’t. Not like this. Not when Yusuf can smell the despair coming from his love’s body. 

“I...I was thinking she’d like something from Quynh. Something to remind her of...of what she’s lost. What she  _ had _ . But perhaps that is too sad. Perhaps it should not be like that.” Nicolo isn’t asking for advice. Just speaking to breathe his words into the world. Yusuf doesn’t answer. Just holds him close. He lets Nicolo talk. “If it were me...If it were me I’d want to eat our food every day. Yours and mine. I’d like to repeat every meal we ever had together. From the very beginning.” 

“We ate un-seasoned hares back then,” Yusuf teases. “Where would you be without your many spices?” 

“With you,” he replies. “If only in my mouth.” It is not funny. It is not even sensual. There’s a brutal honesty in Nicolo’s words and it undoes Yusuf to his core. He presses his lips to the side of Nicolo’s head. 

“What was the first meal we had with them?” he asks. “With...Lykon and Quynh and Andy all those years ago?” 

It takes him a long while to answer. But when he does, he snorts indelicately and turns to press his nose to Yusuf’s throat. “You know? I think it was a rat.” 

“Well then. Let us go find Andromache a rat.” Nicolo’s shoulders hitch. They hitch again. Then, like a wave crashing into a breaker, he laughs. His laughs contort his body. He bends over, giggling like a fool and Yusuf giggles with him. They are bent over each other, breathing each other’s air. Tears press to their eyes as their amusement rises higher and higher. 

A light flicks on, and they turn, wiping at their tears as Nile enters. “Everything okay in here?” she asks, obviously perplexed. 

“Nile, how would you like to try real medieval cooking?” Nicolo asks innocently. The genuine interest on Nile’s face nearly ruins the game, but Nicolo holds it together long enough to catch Yusuf by the hand and stop him from returning to their earlier giggle-fit. 

“Not sure if I should say yes considering how I came in here,” Nile hedges, though she still has the look of someone thoroughly intrigued. 

“Oh, I promise. It will be truly authentic and correct, and we survived for many years on it.” Nicolo’s stomach spasms as he tries to keep his humor in check. “Come, Joe,” he says, tugging on Yusuf’s arm. “It will take us time to find what we need.” He pulls Yusuf out the door before Nile can do much more than wish them well. 

That night, Nicolo starts a new game with Andromache. He revisits their meals one by one. And it starts with a flourish and a presentation. The production of the fire roasted rat on a stick that sends Nile gagging and cursing and telling them she’s going to order a pizza, and Yusuf’s uproarious laughter at the reaction. Andromache takes the stick with delicate fingers and bites at the meal with a relish unseen before. “Syria,” she declares. “1100. With you.” 

Nicolo and Yusuf take each other’s hands and nod. “With you, boss. With you. Now and always, with you." 


End file.
